Henri couldn’t watch death pics

With his head bowed throughout, Henri van Breda sat as far back as possible to avoid seeing photographs of his dead family members, shown in court yesterday.

Van Breda, 22, stands accused of bludgeoning to death his father, mother and brother, as well as the attempted murder of his sister Marli.

The youngest member of the Van Breda family was in a “severe altercation” with her attacker and suffered similar “chop wounds” to her mother, father and brother, forensic pathologist Dr Daphne Anthony told the Western Cape High Court.

Marli van Breda was 16 years old when she was severely injured, while her parents, Martin and Teresa, and brother, Rudi, were murdered in the brutal axe attack in their Stellenbosch home in the early hours of the morning of January 27, 2015.

Anthony testified that she believed, after studying photographs, that Marli was the fourth victim to be attacked.

“The issue about survival after infliction of trauma depends on various factors – it depends on age and the amount of blood loss. You can have severe blood loss, but the body can compensate for that.”

Anthony performed the postmortems on Martin, Teresa and Rudi van Breda and testified that all three died from “head injuries and the consequences thereof”.

She believed Rudi, who was 22 years old at the time, was attacked first and “suffered the most violent attack”. He was lying on his bed on the right side of his face. “With the infliction of trauma to his head, he was aware of what was coming down, so raised his hand in an attempt to ward off the attack.” He sustained a defensive wound on the little finger of his left hand.

In the case of the father, Anthony believed he was attacked next, but was not aware of his attacker. He had no defensive wounds. The mother instinctively raised her right hand which caused the defensive wound on her hand.

“She most likely fell forward on her face,” Anthony testified. – ANA